It took Donald Trump just two days to show the world how susceptible he remains to idle flattery. That was the clear takeaway from the big show he made at the White House last week. He invited Open AI CEO Sam Altman and other tech bros to unveil his $500 billion “Stargate” initiative — a massive investment in American artificial intelligence.

Except that the scene felt like a rerun of Trump’s first-term spectacle with Foxconn and its chairman, Terry Gou. Back then, Gou made grand promises of innovation and job creation. But it all soon dissolved into hot air. Altman, channeling Gou’s sycophantic tone, gushed, “We wouldn’t be able to do this without you, Mr. President.” The photo op painted Trump as a tech-savvy leader driving America to dominate the AI race.

DeepSeek’s AI bombshell: China’s $5.6 million triumph

But the cracks in this narrative appeared as fast as those in Trump’s promises to end the war in Ukraine and free the hostages in Gaza on day one of his presidency. On Monday, Chinese startup DeepSeek unleashed an AI bombshell: R1, a ChatGPT-like model that performs as well as — or better than — its US counterparts, at a fraction of the cost.

More alarming, DeepSeek spent only $5.6 million to develop its groundbreaking model in just two months. Compare that to the billions and years Altman and others needed for their models. That’s why Nvidia’s $600 billion market value plunge was the sound of America’s AI hubris hitting rock bottom.

Adding insult to injury, the very export controls America enacted to stymie Chinese AI progress now look like a friggin’ joke. DeepSeek’s meteoric rise shows that China doesn’t need America’s overpriced hardware or bloated budgets. Headlines screamed “Sputnik moment,” but this was something worse: a reckoning.

Trump has tech bros act like nerds again

America’s tech bros begged for billions in subsidies and claimed that China couldn’t compete without easy access to US chips. Yet China has not only competed but triumphed, and for only a fraction of the cost.

Meanwhile, Trump’s notorious insecurities make him hypersensitive to getting played for a fool. So he must be seething.

Maybe that’s why Google scrambled to appease him by renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America on Google Maps. It’s the kind of idle flattery Trump thrives on — a hollow gesture meant to distract him from the deeper humiliation at play. But these gestures reveal how far Silicon Valley has fallen from grace.

These self-styled visionaries once claimed to be shaping the future. Now they’re reduced to appeasing a president everyone knows they privately scorn.

Frankly, these tech bros have reverted to their high school selves: cowed, obsequious nerds handing over their lunch money to avoid the wrath of the schoolyard bully. The only difference is that the stakes now aren’t personal dignity — they’re global dominance.

AI global power shifts to China

With all due respect to the New York Post, America’s self-immolating obsession with “saving” TikTok” was China’s Sputnik moment. DeepSeek’s R1 is China showing that it’s prepared to win the tech rivalry developing AI represents.

It behooves America to fully appreciate what Russian President Vladimir Putin ominously warned, “The nation that leads in AI will be the ruler of the world.”

China just put the world on notice: the era of unquestioned American tech supremacy is over.